National Poetry Writing month (NaPoWriMo) will be returning in April. Last year we featured a daily poem and prompt from poets around the globe. Submissions are now open for for this year’s challenge. Please submit a poem (your own work) and a related prompt that can inspire anyone to pick up their pen and write a poem. Please also include a photo and short bio and send to poetrynonstop@gmail.com.
Check out the prompts from last year:
Long-running spoken word night Volta returns to The Bicycle Shop on St Benedicts Street for an evening of poetic goodness. There are three minute open-mic slots available for poetry / prose / experiments and two headliners.
Doors: 7pm
Entry: £2
☆Cat Woodward☆
Cat Woodward runs The Poetry Master Class (@catsmasterclass on Twitter). Her third collection, Strange Shape, is due in 2023 from Gatehouse. Her first collection, Sphinx, was published by Salò Press in 2017; her second, Blood. Flower. Joy!, was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons in 2019. In 2018 she won the Ivan Juritz Prize for creative experiment. You can read more about her work at www.catwoodward.com
☆Andrew Hook☆
Andrew Hook has been published extensively in the independent press since 1994 in a variety of genres, with over 170 short stories in print. Most recent publications include a novella written in collaboration with the legendary San Francisco art collective known as The Residents, and his tenth short story collection, Candescent Blooms (Salt Publishing). He also runs the crime noir imprint, Head Shot Press. Andrew can be found at www.andrew-hook.com or Twitter @AndrewHookUK.
If you have any spoken word events in Norwich or nearby you’d like to share please send the details here.
Linda Collins is a poet from New Zealand and currently living in Norwich. She found poetry following the death of her 17-year-old daughter which led to extensive writing and studying and the publication of her collection Sign Language for the Death of Reason.
Linda talks about how to address tragic and difficult experiences in life and shares some poems from her book. She also offers the following exercise:
Write a poem based on the stupid things people have said to you following a painful situation in your life.
Reflecting on difficult, hurtful experiences might be uncomfortable but putting your thoughts down on paper can be cathartic, even if you don’t come up with a poem. You might also take inspiration from things that people have said to other people you know.
You are, as always, encouraged to share any poems you write. Please send them here for possible inclusion on the blog or on future podcasts.
Linda Collins (she/her) has a debut poetry collection, Sign Language for the Death of Reason (Math Paper Press), and is the author of the memoir Loss Adjustment (Ethos Books Singapore; Awa Press New Zealand). She is runner-up in the Mslexia Poetry Contest, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in Poetry last year. She’s doing the Poetry MA at UEA.
You can learn more about her work and her daughter, Victoria, on her website: lindacollinswriter.com
If you’ve been affected by the issues discussed in this episode help is always available. The Samaritans can be contacted 24 hours a day on 116 123 or samaritans.org in the UK.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast please consider showing your support with a donation via ko-fi.com
Books by many of the poets featured on the podcast are available from the Poetry Non-Stop bookshop here. All books purchased via this link help to raise money to keep this podcast going.
Today Alexander Blustin shares a useful technique for writing poems out of nonsense:
This is a prompt from Patrick Widdess’s Poetry Non-Stop book, and it is one I find difficult, but actually the word itself points to a good general method for tackling a difficult prompt. What I’m going to suggest is that you release yourself from making sense. This is a great way to generate original ideas, because when we become hung up on whether something makes logical sense, we become limited by the conscious mind which can be very stuck in its ways.
This was the method I used when I first met the prompt in Patrick’s book. I have taken to using this book during a couple of 30-day months every year, since it is a really convenient way of cornering myself into generating new material every day, and I can then spend the rest of the year editing this into usable poems.
In the case of ‘release’ I started with a few minutes of random writing, during which a garlic press just so happened to pop up, and then I tried writing out an acrostic on the word release. Next, I very quickly wrote down a completely nonsensical sonnet in which the garlic press also happened to feature. Now, at that point, the line ‘he rinsed the neighbour’s garlic press’ occurred to me. I then realised that the concept of release was relevant to the idea of ‘getting out’ of one’s social background through adopting the cookery of a desired social group. The following villanelle was constructed accordingly.
This poem appears in the March 2022 edition of the light verse webzine Lighten Up Online and I wish to thank the editor Jerome Betts for his very helpful feedback.
Getting In
He rinsed the neighbour’s garlic press.
Funny how things come about;
Funny how some things progress.
Better not to leave a mess –
The owner had impressive clout.
He rinsed the neighbour’s garlic press;
Better not to cause distress
To those who lent it for his trout.
Funny how some things progress.
How has he got to this address,
When all those years they kept him out?
He rinsed the neighbour’s garlic press;
Pretentious food, but nonetheless
He’s learnt it wafts away their doubt.
Funny how some things progress;
The pungent odour of success,
The rules one simply cannot flout.
He rinsed the neighbour’s garlic press.
Funny how some things progress.
Alexander Blustin
Alexander Blustin’s light verse has previously appeared in Lighten Up Online, Light Quarterly, The Bell and in audio form on the Poetry Non-Stop blog. His heavier verse has appeared in Popshot and elsewhere. From October 2012 to July 2014 he ran a weekly poetry stall on Cambridge Market (UK), with a particular focus on work from local Modernist and experimental publishers.
Please share your responses to today’s prompt either in the comments or via email. The best submissions will be featured in future podcasts.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast please consider showing your support with a donation via ko-fi.com
Books by many of the poets featured on the podcast are available from the Poetry Non-Stop bookshop here. All books purchased via this link help to raise money to keep this podcast going.
It’s a pleasure to welcome John Hegley, a poet who never fails to entertain with his words, wit, music and audience participation. In a career spanning over 40 years John has appeared on Radio 4 and Radio 1, been a regular at the Edinburgh Festival and been an inspirational tutor running creative writing classes and activities up and down the country.
He has recently published a collection of poems inspired by the life and work of John Keats with Caldew Press called A Scarcity of Biscuit. On the podcast he talks about how he came to know and appreciate Keats’ life and work starting with a residency at Keats’ house. He has continued to explore and write about the great romantic poet using his playful style of writing to reveal a lighter side to the tragic bard’s life.
John’s fish acrostics exercise
Make a paper fish and write an a poem on it with each line beginning with the letters of the word FISH and/or POISSON. See the video above for a demonstration and a couple of examples by Patrick below.
Please share your work as always. It would be great to see pictures of your fish on social media. Please post and tag @poetrynonstop. You can also send them by email here. Let’s create a shoal of poetic paper fish!
You can purchase A Scarcity of Biscuit from Caldew Press here. For John’s other work and activities, see his website: www.johnhegley.co.uk
Books by many of the poets featured on the podcast are available from the Poetry Non-Stop bookshop here. All books purchased via this link help to raise money to keep this podcast going.
Here’s an abracadabra poem by Will Ingrams. Hopefully it will conjure up a bit of green magic as Cop 26 begins.
You can learn more about the abracadabra form on the recent podcast with Ken Cumberlidge here.
When?
And when should we panic? The countries that mine
coal and strangle the planet want time to
‘adjust’, while our leaders decline to
fund wider replacement of gas
burning boilers, so how can
we maintain the hope that
a granddaughter’s child
might find himself
blessed with a
world like
this?
Will Ingrams
Everything’s in the supermarket so you can write about death and sadness and love and romance.
John Osborne
Norwich-based poet John Osborne reads from his latest collection A Supermarket Love Story and discusses the potential for poetry in the setting of the stores we take for granted.
John’s supermarket writing prompt
Choose an aisle in a supermarket and write a poem about it OR write a poem with the title ‘A Supermarket Just Before Closing’.
Tips:
We’d love to read any poems you write so please send them in here for a chance to be featured on the blog or podcast.
John Osborne writes stories, poems and scripts. His poetry has been broadcast on Radio 1, Radio 3, Radio 4, BBC 6Music, XFM and Soho Radio. You can purchase A Supermarket Love Story here with illustrations by Katie Pope
Wendy Hind from Lincoln, Nebraska, turned to poetry when her son was born with critical health problems. As her interest developed in poetry as narrative medicine for the soul she started the Tiny Poetry project, writing and sharing poems that deliver small but potent doses of hope, resilience, compassion and empathy. She shares some of the poems and talks about how the power of poetry is being increasingly recognised in the medical world.
Wendy also shares a poem written in response to Abbie Neale‘s writing exercise on clothing.
Wendy’s tiny poetry exercise
1. Think of a time when you or a loved one was ill. Take a few moments to write down five to 10 words that come into your mind when you think about that experience.
2. Next write a corresponding word next to each of the words you have just written. Maybe it is a descriptive word, maybe an action word, maybe a metaphor.
3. Now read through the group of words circle those pairs that resonate the loudest with you. Add one more brutally honest word to each pair.
4. Take these words and attempt to compose a poem. The poem may be long at first. Often tiny poems are the result of paring down a longer poem – much like taking your initial list of words and taking out those words that are the least powerful.
5. As concise brevity is the point of a tiny poem, every word must work towards the meaning of your poem.
This is a great exercise for focusing the mind and writing about experiences that might be difficult to address. As you can see from the notes above, the initial list of does not have to be particularly creative or original. The words may or may not end up in the final poem but can help to pinpoint the one concise thing you want to say about the subject you’re writing about.
As always, submissions are encouraged. Please send you poems here to be featured on the blog or podcast.
You can find out more about Wendy and the Tiny Poetry project at www.tinypoetryproject.com
Books by many of the poets featured on the podcast are available from the Poetry Non-Stop bookshop here. All books purchased via this link help to raise money to keep this podcast going.
Coming up on the podcast Wendy Hind from Lincoln, Nebraska, shares poems from her Tiny Poetry project and talks about how it was inspired by her son who was born with critical health issues. You can find more poems on her website.
White Flag
If you think I am going
to wave the white flag
you are mistaken.
If you think I am going
to retreat
you are wrong.
I may have to refortify,
I may have to bandage my wounds,
but I am not done fighting,
and I intend to win this war.
I will not surrender
to my pain,
nor to you.
Wendy Hind
LA-based poet Michelle Marie Jacquot’s new pamphlet DETERIORATE, which criticizes and questions the digital age and the effects our modern world has had on humanity. She reads from this and her other collections and discusses her no-nonsense DIY approach to publishing and promotion.
Michelle’s predictive text poetry writing exercise
Has technology ever corrected something you meant to write into something completely different? What did it change? How did you react, feel? Maybe not even a word, perhaps a name? Someone you love to someone you hate? Did it make you angry? Make you laugh? Or was it a silly word? One you never use? Did it change the meaning entirely? Maybe it just made you annoyed at your phone? Who knows. Think on one time autocorrect has changed your words without permission. If it hasn’t, congratulate yourself and write about being precise or lucky, or both.
Please share whatever poems the exercise inspires. Submissions can be sent here for possible inclusion on the blog or future episodes.
For more information about Michelle Marie Jacquot and to buy her books visit www.michellemariejacquot.com
Books by many of the poets featured on the podcast can be purchased via the Poetry Non-Stop bookshop here. All books purchased via this link help to raise money to keep this podcast going.
Poetry Non-Stop 